Gender Performance And Identity Construction In Sarah Waters' Victorian Trilogy

As a cutting-edge female writer nominated by Booker Prize,Sara Waters has also been included in the "20 Best Contemporary English Writers".Her "New Victorian Novels" have attracted much attention,mainly including "Light Licking Velvet,Half-Body,and City of Thorns,all of which are written in Victorian London,England,are known as the "Victoria Trilogy".This article takes Butler's "gender drill" theory as the theoretical basis for the Victoria Trilogy's gender drill and identity construction research.Judith Butler,as an outstanding representative of postmodern feminism,her "gendder drill" The theory is of great value to the development of feminist theory and gender politics.Its theory draws on the important theoretical viewpoints of many post-modern philosophers and rethinks the distinction between physiological and social gender in traditional feminist theory.This paper takes Butler's "gender "Performance" theory is the theoretical basis for the study of gender performance and identity construction in the "Victoria Trilogy".It interprets the gender performance and identity construction model of gay heroines in the works,and uses Butler's theory to explore the survival of lesbian groups in a patriarchal society.Circumstances,from the two dimensions of explicit mode and implicit mode,to explore the manipulation and construction of marginal women's gender identity,to achieve an in-depth interpretation of gender performance and identity construction of lesbian groups in the Victorian Trilogy,to dispel the tradition The cultural model of duality between men and women under norms.This article is divided into three parts.The first part mainly introduces the author Sara Waters and her "Victoria Trilogy",and introduces the main features of the"gender drill" theory of famous postmodern feminist theorist Judith Butler.The views are briefly introduced and elaborated.The second part focuses on the analysis of the explicit and implicit modes of female gender identity construction supported by the"sex drill" theoretical point of view.Among them,the explicit mode is based on the characteristics of the body,clothing and diet.Interpretation of other issues,explore the explicit mode of gender exercise and identity construction of lesbian groups;the implicit mode explores women through the analysis and interpretation of lesbian groups' own voices and breakthroughs in confined power spaces The homosexual group's implicit deconstruction and internal model of the patriarchal center culture and mainstream discourse system,and how this group challenged Victorian sexual taboos,explored the lesbian group's resistance to male discourse hegemony,and got out of the dilemma of self-identity As well as its pursuit and efforts for new life valuesThe true restoration of the historical fate of the city,and rethinking the identity of the lesbian group from the contemporary cultural context.